LIKE an ancient path that runs through the fenlands of eastern England, joined by tributaries that Hereward the Wake once trod with his band of men, this is a story that might end in the warming glow of a cottage fire or the mud of a benighted tidal estuary. I don’t know yet because it’s an adventure. All I know is it starts at Norwich station.

Norwich? But there aren’t any mountains near Norwich, are there? No, is the short and only answer. But there is adventure. Let me tell you about Father Fred . . .

Father Fred was my wife’s grandfather. He lived in the village of Blofield, about five miles east of Norwich. Fred joined the Norfolk Regiment in 1914 and was wounded on the Somme the following year. After they patched him up he was transferred to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers because his battalion had been wiped out. He got off the boat in Dublin to join his regiment the morning the Easter Rising broke out. He saw action in Dublin and Cork – and more in Greece, Egypt and France before being wounded a second time. Patched up again, he finished the war in France in the Machine Gun Corps. So he’d seen a bit.

Father Fred would sit at his fireside smoking roll-your-owns, telling us tales and chuckling at the world. He’d spent the rest of his life working as a coachpainter and tending his garden. He had the easy though reflective air of a man who has seen the horrors of war and managed to come to terms with the worst bits. He lived to the age of 93, leaving nothing much in this world but fond memories and a garden full of leeks.

Father Fred once told me about a pub called the Berney Arms, which is reputed to be the most remote and inaccessible pub in the country. No roads lead to the Berney Arms. It can be reached only by boat along the River Yare, from a railway halt in the middle of nowhere, or by long paths winding through the marshes. Naturally, it’s a place anyone who owns a pair of boots must visit.

So on our next sojourn at Father Fred’s – which would have been the autumn of 1982 or 83 – I hitched my backpacking gear on my shoulder and set off from his backdoor, intending to walk the 16 miles along the river to the Berney Arms, camp the night, then wander on to Great Yarmouth and continue up the coast. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was late October and decidedly chilly – but good walking weather. Unfortunately, it ended in disaster.

All these years later I have yet to sample a pint in the Berney Arms. I actually got there on that cold and blustery evening in the early 1980s, only to discover the pub had closed for the winter a week earlier. This remote and inaccessible riverside inn was as dark as the land and the sky around it. I pitched my tent on the riverbank as storm clouds rolled in from the North Sea and endured what was one of the wettest and windiest nights Norfolk had suffered for many years. Not only that, it was the night the clocks went back – so it was an hour longer than your normal night.

Early next morning I packed the tent and headed downstream for Great Yarmouth. I’d had nothing to drink for 20 hours except brackish water from ditches and was experiencing wild hallucinations of ice-cold pints of lager and lime (that’s what saltwater does to you). I never reached Yarmouth. On the outskirts, my wife’s uncle – who had been despatched to search for me – spotted a forlorn figure struggling through banks of brambles near the A47 and hailed me from his car. He’s not stopped laughing about it since.

So it’s a Saturday morning nearly thirty years later. An August sun beats down on the flat lands of East Anglia as I sit in my brother-in-law’s car heading for Norwich station. I’m a man with a mission. That mission is to catch a train to a place called Reedham, walk five miles through the marshes to the Berney Arms, have as many pints as I deem is safe, continue another five miles down the river to Great Yarmouth and catch a train back.

My brother-in-law George (who would have made the rank of major in the Royal Artillery had it not been for an unfortunate incident in Germany) is quite happy to drop me at the station. George is also a man with a mission. Today he plans to build a replica of Odessa’s Potemkin Stairs in his back garden, which is situated in a posh area of Norwich. “I’ve got some spare slabs and cement, Al,” he says as we pull up in the station car park. “I can’t see it being a big job.”

With a £5 ticket and two exotic baguettes from a stall on the station concourse, I’m rattling through the Norfolk broads on a neat little train listening to a young couple having an argument at the other end of the carriage. The villages of Postwick, Brundell and Blofield flash by, then Cantley with its sugar refinery. And all about are flat reed beds, flat pastures, and marshy woodlands as far as the eye can see. It’s a two-dimensional landscape unfolding beneath a wide blue sky – the same wide blue sky old Father Fred toiled beneath as a farm labourer before marching off to war in 1914, expecting everything to be over by Christmas.

At Reedham, having watched the train disappear into the vanishing point, I encounter the Wherryman’s Way. This is a waymarked trail that follows the River Yare from Norwich to Great Yarmouth. The indistinct tracks I tramped from Blofield all those years ago are now marked at strategic points with little wherry emblems. Wherries were single-masted cargo boats that plied the broads in days gone by, the type of vessel that might loom ponderously through the brushstrokes of a Constable or Turner. Like all working boats, they possessed an elegance and a . . . .

. . . Sorry. I’ll have to stop there because I can feel a John Masefield “Cargoes” moment coming on. Back to the walk.

On the riverfront at Reedham I spy a wooden seat upon which is inscribed: “Tide in, tide out – water on a ceaseless journey.” Little things like this impress me no end. With the tide and wind behind me, the sun in my face and a path underfoot, I leave the inhabited world and enter a land of broad acres and wide skies, where the only sounds are the wind in the reeds and the cries of distant birds.

The sails of yachts glide surreally through the reeds on an unseen river. Ruined windmills stand at intervals along the bank. My path meanders on, following the crest of a dyke that prevents the tidal Yare from flooding the pastures and returning this mysterious though haunting country to its natural state. This is good walking. This is the type of walking where a man can stretch his legs and put some miles behind him. With nothing to bar my way except the occasional gate, and beneath a glorious sky where a Spitfire would not be out of place among the cirrus, I rattle onwards to the legendary sign of the Berney Arms.

MOST of the windmills of the Norfolk Broads were built for pumping water from the reclaimed pasturelands into the raised ditches and rivers that drain into the sea. All are now redundant, having being replaced by steam and diesel pumps during the last century. These have since been replaced by electric pumps. Most of the windmills fell into ruin, though in recent years some have been restored to their former glory. In an interesting and commendable recent development, some of the towers have been partially restored and used to house the switchgear for the electric pumps – such as Cadge’s Mill, above – giving them a new lease of life performing the function they were built for centuries ago. Cadge’s Mill pumped water until 1941 when it was replaced by diesel pumps.

Speaking of Spitfires – well, not actually Spitfires, but certainly wartime East Anglia – I once cycled from Blofield to Southwold, in Suffolk, and spent an evening sitting outside a pub with some old lads who remembered American bombers departing from the many airfields in the vicinity. Apparently, Southwold – or the sky above it – was one of the rallying points where the various squadrons would group before heading across the channel. The old lads would watch Flying Fortresses embark on their daytime missions and return in the evening – the ones that were fortunate enough to return, that is. The next day, on my way back to Blofield, I chanced upon an old Second World War airfield. The runways were still there and many of the buildings. But it had been turned into a Bernard Matthews turkey farm. Just thought I’d mention that.

Today the Berney Arms is open for business. I buy a pint of the Green Jack Brewery’s Excelsior bitter and sit by the river, watching boats sailing past. This is the life, I’ll tell you. It’s not often I get chance to have a pint while I’m out walking. And walking makes you thirsty. Especially round here where all the ditches are filled with saltwater.

And I’ll tell you what else I do – I drink a silent toast my achievement. Nearly thirty years after first setting out to sample a pint in this celebrated pub, I am finally sitting here in magnificent sunshine supping a quality ale brewed in nearby Lowestoft. Never mind the holidaymakers who have chugged up the river in their caravan-coloured pleasure craft, I have negotiated vast and treacherous reed beds following little wherry signs. Hereward the Wake would have been proud of me.

Ten minutes later I saunter back inside and buy a pint of the Humpty Dumpty Brewery’s Nord Atlantic bitter then saunter back to the river. I toast Father Fred and watch more boats sailing past. A short time later I buy another pint of Nord Atlantic. Then I toast Bernard Matthews because he died recently and the silly old bugger did nothing wrong except find a gap in a burgeoning market and make lots of money. Then I think, perhaps, I’ve had enough to drink and wander on my way.

Polkey's Mill at Seven Mile House, on the River Yare

Polkey's Mill. The chimney to the right served a steam pump. All the buildings have been restored.

The Berney Arms Drainage Mill, which is sometimes open to the public . . .

. . . But not today

A ruined windmill on the south side of the river, which the Ordnance Survey refers to somewhat unimaginatively as "Drainage Pump (disused)"

Lockgate Drainage Mill, on the banks of Breydon Water

The River Yare and Berney Arms Drainage Mill, from the Berney Arms

The path continues from the Berney Arms

My path now skirts the banks of Breydon Water, a tidal estuary about a mile wide which narrows again to river-width near the sea at Yarmouth. The tar-black towers of windmills – some restored, some in ruins – dot the horizon. The impressive walls of the Roman fort of Burgh Castle – Gariannonvm – guard the southern shore. My wide sky is now cloudy and grey, the slaty estuary whipped by a wind from the west. This is a wild place that hasn’t changed since the last war, since the First World War, perhaps since the Napoleonic wars. And the path continues along its meandering dyke between sea and land, to its destination on the coast.

It would have been appropriate, poetic even, to have ended this walk in a harbour-side inn where lobster pots are stacked against a sun-warmed wall and a ship’s bell hangs in the bar. But on its final meander my path dives beneath the A12 road bridge into an Asda car park. A sad grey railway station lies beyond the farthest trolley collection point. In the space of a hundred yards I have stepped from a timeless world into a land of banality. Was it all worth it, I ask myself?

An hour later I’m sitting in a garden admiring the completed first phase of George’s mission to recreate the Potemkin Stairs. It’s two B&Q slabs with some bricks and cement under them. “Everyone’s got to start somewhere, Al,” he says with enthusiasm. “Shall we get the beer out?”

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About McFadzean

Alen McFadzean, journalist, formerly of the Northern Echo, in Darlington, and the North-West Evening Mail, Barrow. Former shipyard electrician. Former quarryman and tunneller. Climbs mountains and runs long distances to make life harder. Gravitates to the left in politics just to make life harder still. Now lives in Orgiva, Spain.

Great story, and I’m all for walks where there’s a pint available at the halfway point! Maybe there’s a business opportunity here. I need to come up with a name for a pub halfway up Lochnagar, under the cliffs, overlooking the loch. It has to be a sure fire hit – might even get the occasional Royal in for a sherry. Let’s get it on Dragon’s Den!!!………..J

Another great read McEff. 1976 the year of the sun, 21 years old and we did a week on a cruiser on the Broads never been back. Maybe go in the van when i retire. Liked the poem as well, remember it from school.

Wow. 1976, 19 and hitch-hiking round Scotland with a mate. Funniliy enough, the landlord of the Berney Arms told me the Broads aren’t anywhere near as popular as they were because a lot of the boatyards have closed down and been sold to developers. And I met only one party of walkers and a single hiker the whole day. Get down there in the van!

Timeless writing worth reading. I can see a book coming. A book I shall buy and read with a pint of real ale. What a really nice story. I’m off to find out who Hereward the Wake was and I’ve also been reading about wassailing – just love the hidden culture down that way. It’s nice the way you include human stories in the landscape you walk through. That’s what really bakes the biscuit for me.

Oops. I intended to put a Hereward link in but forgot. But you will have discovered by now, Alistair, that he was a William Wallace figure who lived in the fenlands and rallied the Anglo Saxons against the Norman oppressors. That’s the popular story anyway. But glancing at Wikipedia it appears he was perhaps not all he’s been cracked up to be. That seems to happen a lot these days. I’m waiting for the Mel Gibson take. Meanwhile I shall insert a link. Cheers.

Yet another really enjoyable read, you have great way of bringing several stories together to create a living landscape. I have never been to the area (no hills), that I now realise was a mistake and needs correcting.

Thanks David. I’ve been going down there for years to visit the in-laws, and occasionally get chance to do some walking. I find it makes a refreshing change. It’s also great cycling country – miles and miles of country lanes with very few hills. Great pubs too!

The flatlanders used to be scared of high places. Mountains didn’t become fashionable until Victorian times – despite the fact ordinary people have lived and toiled among them since the ice retreated. Thanks for the link. I enjoyed the poem and I’ll look at some more. The one below it, Poppies, I found particularly moving – I’ve just been going through my grandfather-in-law’s diaries of the First World War. Thanks for that.

Having lived on the edge of the Fens for the last thirty years or so I always found them a fascinating place – on the macro level truly awesome skyscapes, and at the micro level beautiful tiny flowers and wild creatures. I am not sure why, but I always found walking next to the huge drains and rivers quite intimidating – their huge volumes and steady flows are like monstrous beasts waiting to swallow you up!
I *did* rather like the inland East Anglian walks like the Peddars way – bright, airy and cheerful, passing through snug little villages like Castle Acre.
Another great piece Allen. – I’ll finish with a tip for George, though, if I may be so bold: Don’t leave the baby’s pram at the top of those steps…

Hi Alan. I know what you mean about those rivers. I drive over the Great Ouse at Kings Lynn about six times a year – when the tide’s in it’s huge and scary, but when it’s out and the mud is exposed it looks even scarier. I wouldn’t like to be on it in a rowing boat.
George has just come back from Odessa. Apparently you can have your photograph taken pushing a polystyrene pram over the top. That wouldn’t have been allowed under Uncle Joe!

Alen, wonderful post, showing that you can have a great walk without climbing hills. Makes a change sometimes to do something a bit different. I am amazed how many different types of ales there are this days I haven’t heard of the ones you drank before. Still I found 3 new ales in the Peak District at the weekend – great to discover and drink them 🙂

I hadn’t heard of those ales before I ventured into the Berney Arms either. You’re right, different types of walking country open your eyes. It’s good to do something different for a change. Having said that, I’m back to the Munro bagging soon. That’s the best type of walking. Cheers, Mark. Enjoy your next unfamiliar pint.

BECAUSE THEY'RE THERE is about climbing mountains – nothing else. Well, actually, there are one or two other things. But it's mostly about climbing mountains. And fish and chips. And politics. And doing a bit of fell running. And wondering where the hell your life's gone – and where it might be going next. And cooking kippers in a wet tent. And people you bump into who do similar things. Actually, that last one doesn't happen very often . . .

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